lingered than hurried over the earlier stages. But then he was superficial in nothing. Besides the thoroughness of his drawing he had done all he could to perfect himself in other respects. He was learned in all that the Greeks or Italians had done, and had scientifically analysed their works. He had read everything of value treating of methods and mediums. He had anatomy at his fingers' ends, and his system of procedure was one carefully thought out for the production of the best work in the best way. In fact, he may be held up to younger generations as the very type of the professional

craftsman.

When all the evidence of labour given by his drawings is seen it will, I fear, be a shock to many. The belief that an artist's life is an easy one will never be eradicated from the mind of the majority. They will probably continue to think that Art is a charming accomplishment, which, if somewhat difficult to acquire, is, when once learnt, a pleasant employment in moments of inspiration. But if anything would bring it home to them that it is not so, one would suppose it would be these drawings. For here we see a man not only while young and winning his way in the world, but still when loaded with honours and with business, going through the same mill every time he sits down to paint a picture-indeed, ever toiling harder and growing more fastidious as he feels the years before him grow fewer, until finally by continual exertion is brought on a fatal malady and death, which, if he would but have consented to take his ease, the doctors think he might have averted.

But Leighton's indomitable character would yield to nothing less than death. Turning over the portfolios we see it written more legibly than if it were set down in a journal. Here was a man pursued with ambition to excel, clear-headed, sparingly emotional, a man of intellect and iron will. If he was not exactly a poet in the sense of displaying a warm sympathy with human nature, he was eminently so in the sense that he had a cult and love for beauty. He had an ideal, which he pursued with an unswerving passion. It was his habit and his creed to keep his pictures generally impersonal, but now and again his heart appeared in them, and once at any rate the springs of his innermost life were committed to canvas in a picture which was the type of his general mental attitude, viz. The Spirit of the Summits.'

S. P. COCKERELL.

THE CONDITIONS OF LIFE AFTER DEATH

MEN'S minds in both hemispheres have been drawn with fresh interest to the problems connected with man's persistent life beyond the tomb by the turning of Mr. Gladstone's ever bright and eager intellect in that direction. But though his treatment of the subject has given fresh point to the perennial inquiry: Whither do we go?' the interest aroused by his articles is due to more than the eminence of the writer. More than ever in this age of doubt and of challenge of all traditions does man yearn for a definite knowledge of his future, nay, for some sure knowledge that he has a future at all. It is not enough that heavenly visions shall soothe his heart; his intellect demands satisfaction and refuses to be silenced by authority. The time seems ripe to offer an answer that includes all that is true in the clashing replies of many creeds, that affirms the verifiability of the facts of the post-mortem states, and removes the whole question from the region of doubt into that of investigation and study. If the statement made be regarded in the light of a possible hypothesis and be applied to the many jostling declarations already before us, it will be found to explain much that seems incredible to some while passionately asserted by others, to reconcile allegations that appear contradictory because they are partial, to illuminate propositions that are obscure because they need analysis and rearrangement. Each must judge for himself whether the hypothesis be sufficiently credible to be taken on trial as a theory, and time alone can decide whether the theory shall ultimately be accepted as a plain record of the facts in Nature.

Believers in the continuing life of man may be grouped into three great classes:

of

1. Those who believe on the authority of documents-many them of great antiquity-documents containing statements either directly written by living persons who claimed to possess first-hand knowledge on the matter in question, or written down by the followers of such persons from their oral teachings. This class includes all the members of the religions of the world who base their belief in man's survival after death on the testimony of prophets and seers as recorded in their several scriptures.

2. Those who believe on the authority of statements professing to be made by denizens of the invisible world, who know by personal experience the conditions they describe. This class includes all spiritualists and also all religionists who accept as part of their scriptures revelations on this matter made by Gods, angels, or spirits.

3. Those who believe on the authority of what they claim as their own first-hand experience, their own investigations-carried on while they are still in the body-of the states usually reached only through the gateway of death. To this class may be added those who accept from them directly their first-hand testimony on various corroborative grounds satisfactory to themselves.

It is with this last class that this article is chiefly concerned, for their methods and results are less familiar to the public than those of classes 1 and 2. But we need to note a few preliminary points

about the two latter.

Religionists of all faiths are at one as regards man's survival after death, but they differ widely as to the conditions which will surround him in the post-mortem states, and as to the permanency or transitoriness of their duration. Almost all believe that man after death passes into a transitional state, in which there may be much suffering wherein he shakes off gradually the faults of his lower nature, to enter purified into a condition of bliss. The majority regard this blissful state as of long but limited duration, to be followed by a return of the soul to earth, to pass through another mundane experience, the evolutionary life of the soul being made up of long periods of extracorporeal existence, separated from each other by relatively brief plunges into corporeal life. The minority allot to each soul, whether it be of high or of low type, but one lesson hour on earth to be followed by endless ages elsewhere, the rapture or the torture of eternity being determined—according to a rapidly decreasing school-by the incidents of the brief earthly span; as to details there is much variety of opinion, some believing that eternity will be spent in progress, others that the soul will remain crystallised in an immediately perfected beatitude.

The

However much religionists may quarrel over the nature of the post-mortem states, no balanced judgment can deny weight to their complete consensus of opinion that Not all of me shall die.' quarrels are due to the partiality of the different sets of believers, who are apt to claim uniqueness for their several heavens to the exclusion of the heavens of others, as they claim uniqueness for their several scriptures to the exclusion of the scriptures of others-forgetting that all scriptures have their share of inspiration, all heavens their representatives in space. But the agreement is due to the deeply rooted conviction in all human hearts, breathed into them by the spirit within them all, that the life of the body is not the life of the man, and that death has no power over all that is noblest in his nature.

All these religionists are further committed to the belief that men in the past have been able to penetrate beyond the veil of death, and to bring back records of life in the world invisible to fleshly eyes.

Spiritualists-to use the name adopted by many of class 2-show similar agreement as to the continuance of life and similar diversity in details. The descriptions given by 'spirits' of post-mortem existence vary from those of the commonest replicas of earthly conditions to those of highly etherealised and unfettered states of being; and they generally avoid the error of exclusion, and do not attempt to reduce the invisible world to a sameness which does not characterise the visible. The evidence adduced by spiritualists as to man's continued existence cannot lightly be waved aside as incredible nor be crushed under the imputation of fraud. Frauds indeed there have been, sometimes connived at, sometimes contrived by mediums, sometimes imposed upon them hypnotically by sitters determined to expose them, and often caused by the controls' to whom they blindly yield themselves. But when all frauds are allowed for and sifted out, there remains a residuum of hard facts, testified to by persons of clear judgment, keen intelligence and unimpeachable veracity, that no thoughtful investigator can afford to disregard. The inferences drawn from the facts may be open to challenge, but the facts themselves will bear the closest scrutiny, and it is right to remember as to the inferences that the most thoughtful and careful spiritualists do not now ascribe all the phenomena of the séance room to disembodied human intelligences.

Let us turn to class 3. Mesmeric and hypnotic investigations, carried on by men of science, have amply demonstrated the truth of the contention put forward by occultists in all ages, that the consciousness of man includes far more than is shown in his everyday waking consciousness, and that in the deeper hypnotic states is unveiled a consciousness so completely individualised that it regards itself, and is recognised by others, as separate from and superior to the consciousness working in the physical brain. This higher individualised consciousness is regarded by occultists as the real or inner man, and as existing in everyone, in however latent a condition; the consciousness working in the brain, closely entangled with the body and with the animal nature of man, is looked upon by them as a merely personal consciousness concerned with the present life, put forth by the true consciousness, the human soul, for the carrying on of the lower nature, but so hampered and blinded by its gross surroundings that it does not recognise its real identity with the soul, and fails to understand the purpose of its putting forth into earthly life-the gathering of experience for the development and evolution of the soul that lives for ever. All agree-religionists, spiritualists and occultists alike—that the human soul leaves the body at the change that men call death;' spiritualists allege that, in the case of mediums at

least, it can leave the body during earth life, and allow another entity to take possession of and control the body; occultists declare that it can leave the body at will and return to it at will, bringing back and impressing on the physical brain the experiences it may have undergone during its extra-corporeal travels.

6

The human soul is not bodiless; it has a body of subtle matter, too fine to be seen by the physical eye-the 'spiritual body' of St. Paul-and is further clothed with two lower but still subtle bodies; in these the soul can exercise all its perceptive faculties far more perfectly than when it is encumbered by the grosser body of flesh. It can withdraw itself from the latter-which then remains asleep or entranced, as the case may be, emptied of intellectual consciousness -and is then, for the time being, a 'disembodied' intelligence, like unto the angels,' and is free to range at will and in full self-consciousness the worlds that are usually entered through the gateway of death. It can there observe, compare, and record the phenomena of those regions, and thus gain an experimental knowledge of their inhabitants and conditions. True, it is subject to errors, as it is here, from careless observation, hasty generalisations from partial knowledge, inferences biassed by prejudices and preconceived opinions. But it is on the way to acquire valuable information, and its errors will be corrected by riper study and by the repeated investigations of other observers. The faculties of the soul improve by use in its subtle bodies as much as they do in its physical vehicle, and must be evolved, educated and trained by slow degrees and steady practice. There is no royal road to knowledge for the soul either in the physical or in the subtle bodies, and law rules in other regions as it does here.

The observer, then, of the phenomena of post-mortem states is the human soul, using the organs of the subtle bodies instead of those of the gross. When it has developed the power of energising the subtle bodies, it is not, however, necessary that it should absolutely quit the physical body in order to use these greatly extended powers of observation. By practice it can exercise these while remaining 'wide awake' in the physical world, and two or more people may sit together with all their physical faculties active and yet observe the phenomena of the subtle worlds, communicate their observations to each other in the ordinary way, and discuss and compare the objects they are studying.

It is admitted on all hands by religious people that prophets and seers exercised these powers of the soul in the past, but they are not prepared to admit that man can do now what man has done. If the fact be admitted for any period in human history, there is no a priori impossibility in its repetition: whether it is being now repeated is a matter of evidence, which each can examine for himself. But it may be asked, Can any one investigate the subtler realms of Nature and reverify individually the observations made by